Has anyone got any ideas as to the best way to allocate on-going
maintenance tasks such that they are visible and consume a percentage
of a resource's time, but without being burdensome to maintain?
Any ideas would be appreciated.
Thanks
Janet
Janet,
You basically have what is known as a level of effort (LOE) activity.
There are several ways to handle LOE tasks. I'll give you a couple of
choices and maybe someone else will throw in their 2 cents.
One method is to set up a single task that spans the length of the
project, or however long the LOE activity spans. Assign the resource(s)
and enter the estimated work content. For example, let's say the project
spans 12 months and one resource is performing LOE at a level of 10% of
their time. The actual number of hours per standard working month varies
of course but the accepted average is approximately 160 hours per month.
At a rate of 10%, that amounts to 12 x 160 x 0.1 = 192 hours for the
year. Maintaining the LOE task is easy because credit is taken based on
the passage of time, not on how much effort may or may not be expended.
So if the project is statused once a month, each month you would enter,
n/12 in the % Complete field (where n is the month, n=1 for first month,
n=2 for second month, etc.).
However, an even easier way to set up the LOE task is by creating
separate individual LOE tasks for each status period. So for the same
example where the project is 12 months in duration and it is statused
each month, create 12 LOE tasks, one for each month. At the status date
simply set the % Complete for that month's LOE task at 100%.
Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP
